Saturday, July 06, 2013

Endeavour: the First Full Season

Detective
Constable Morse is repeatedly told to pay more attention to traditional police
work than his hunches. However, the
young policeman’s instincts often prove correct. Such will not necessarily be the case later
in his career. Viewers will start to
understand why Robbie Lewis often had to tidy up after his mentor in the first
full season of Endeavour (promo here), which airs this
Sunday as part of the current season of PBS’s Masterpiece Mystery.

Following
last year’s successful one-off, the socially awkward Morse has impressed the
dapper DI Fred Thursday with his aptitude, but he is not especially popular
with the rest of the force. This
definitely includes their new by-the-book-seniority-over-merit Chief
Superintendent. Morse will not do his
career many favors as he openly defies orders and protocol in the season
opening, Girl.

When
a prominent nuclear researcher’s unstable daughter becomes the prime suspect
for murder, Morse sets out to clear her name.
Obviously, this is not Superintendent Bright’s policy and even the only-so-indulgent
Thursday is skeptical. An okay
procedural, Girl goes out of its way
to portray the Edward Teller-ish character in a negative light. While it
introduces the supercilious Bright and the stalwart Constable Jim Strange, it
is the weakest the series, so far.

Quickly
rebounding, Fugue represents Endeavour at its strongest. Morse has been busted down to “general duties,”
but when a murderer starts leaving opera-related clues, the inexperienced DC is
pulled back into the thick of things. Crisply
helmed by Tom Vaughan (best known stateside for Harrison Ford’s middling Extraordinary Measures), Fugue incorporates several clever clues
and nicely evokes the time when police forces were only just beginning to come
to terms with the serial killer concept.

The
current season maintains it momentum with Rocket,
another strong crime story with particularly strong period details. During the relatively new Queen Elizabeth’s
state visit to a struggling munitions plant, a worker is murdered in the back
office area. It turns out Percy Malleson
was the factory’s equivalent of Morse, a standoffish fellow suspected by his
fellow workers of being a management snitch.

However,
he was not really Malleson, but Eustace Kendrick, the prime suspect in a local
girl’s unsolved disappearance several years ago. A well written case, Rocket’s ultimate murderer could never conceivably be the perp in a
Hollywood produced show, which makes it jolly refreshing.

The
season concluding Home is not a bad
episode, but it emphasizes character development over the investigation. Morse and Thursday largely chase their tails
as they try to deduce the murderer of an Oxford professor. However, fans will get a large helping of
backstory when Thursday confronts the London gangster whom he blames for the
death of his former Sergeant.

Shaun
Evans settles in quite nicely as the title character, playing him with the
right mix of prickliness and earnest guilelessness. Likewise, Roger Allam’s
Thursday might be the smartest character currently on television. Morse fans will also be happy to hear John
Thaw’s daughter Abigail regularly appears as muckraking editor Dorothea Frazil
(she rather grows on viewers, in fact).
Anton Lessor (recognizable from The Hour, The Scapegoat, and Spies of Warsaw) is a bit buffoonish as Bright, but humanizes him a bit in the
series closer.

Endeavour
is one of the better British mysteries going. Evans and Allam play off each other well and vivid
sense of time and place—Oxford in the early 1960’s—adds a distinctive flavor.
Recommended for fans of Colin Dexter’s characters as well as those interested
in the era, the first full season of Endeavour
launches tomorrow night (7/7) on most PBS outlets nationwide.

About Me

J.B. (Joe Bendel) works in the book publishing industry, and also teaches jazz survey courses at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He has written jazz articles for publications which would be appalled by his political affiliation. He also coordinated instrument donations for displaced musicians on a volunteer basis for the Jazz Foundation of America during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Send e-mail to: jb.feedback "at" yahoo "dot" com.